Foodie. Feminist. Wanderluster.

50 Ticks Ft. Sous-Chef | A Foodie’s Easter

As I’ve spoken about before, for my mum’s 50th birthday, I made her a book of 50 things for her to do before she turned 51. With less than two months to go, my mum is keeping her cool and trying to find any way possible to legally disown me so she can put her feet up for the remaining 51 days. Yesterday – with a teeny bit of help from me – she ticked off two more ticks: to make an Easter showstopper, and cook a three course meal; each course being from a different culture and involving something she hadn’t cooked before (I don’t make it easy).

Admittedly, because of revision, I wasn’t able to help as much as I wanted to but, quite clearly, my mum didn’t need me. Therefore, I was sous-chef and photographer for the day. (Photo one will be my application to becoming Lakeland’s Instagram Person.) My brother also swooped in occasionally to get his hands dirty, which helped create the menu that (with a glass of bubbly) was:

The cake as pictured above was a mission and a half. Mum bought a fillable cake mould, ready to make a showstopping piece worthy of Bake Off. Spoilers: by ten o’clock Friday night, it was a pale crumbly mess on the kitchen counter, us picking at it half miserably, half comically. We had followed a recipe and it hadn’t paid off. So, when I was at work the next day, my mum Mary Berry-d up and got the job done. Later that evening we made the chocolate moose for the middle and we (I) decorated it the following morning. I like to think the second photo is cut from an episode of Bake Off where they pan round on camera and the contestant stands there, proud of their masterpiece.

I was no help in the production of the crabcakes but they were delicious as the menu said (unsurprisingly, because I wrote it). Once again, I can’t pretend I was much help for the main. Mum used her new pasta machine, but when the going got tough, my brother and I entered the kitchen, making it tougher by taking silly selfies. As a team, we filled, rolled and pinched. And it made for the yummiest main. Earlier on in the day (“here’s some we made earlier”) mum and I had made the chauxbuns for the profiteroles. A couple of hours after professing we will never eat again (we were as stuffed as the pasta), mum and I whipped up (wahey) the cream, melted the chocolate and presented a messy but tasty pile of dessert.

We had a lovely Easter full of food, not much chocolate; but a lot of food. You can find my mum’s lovely blog where she will talk about both challenges HERE!